Fega Frisch, 1958

The literary and political journal Der neue Merkur appeared in Germany between 1914 and 1925. This magazine is typical of Weimar Germany, whose literary landscape was partially formed by literary and intellectual magazines. The authors of Der neue Merkur were a small but select group, who wrote more for prestige reason rather than pay. The journal was addressed to an intellectual elite and it had an immense appeal to Europe's most famous authors and public figures. The Neue Merkur Collection is based upon the magazine's correspondence letters from 1919 to 1925. A sparkling group of steady contributors, including Europe's most prominent writers and thinkers, were writing for the journal. Their letters have been collected here. Among them were Thomas and Heinrich Mann, Bertold Brecht, Jakob Wassermann, Alfred Doeblin, Max Picard, André Gide and Martin Buber

Part of the collection is on microfilm MF 244, arranged by date

Efraim Frisch was born on March 1, 1873 in Stryj, a small town in the southeast Austro-Hungarian Empire. The city is located in what is today Poland. His father, a merchant and a very devout orthodox Jew, offered him a traditional religious education. Frisch also gained knowledge about western culture by studying philosophy, history of art and literature in Berlin. This duality of cultures was always a main topic in his work. "Das Verlöbnis," one of Frisch's earliest short stories, is about a young boy, whose dream is to travel to Vienna and to escape the constriction of the shtetl in Eastern Europe, where he's living

As a publisher, author and theater critic, Frisch played an important role in the literary and cultural life of German-speaking Europe. He was chief editor of the journal Monatsschrift für geistiges Leben, in which he had published the writings of the brothers Heinrich and Thomas Mann, Gottfried Benn, Robert Musil and Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Before World War I, he was also involved in Berlin's theater scene, as a dramatic adviser for Max Reinhard and a critic for theater journals

In 1912 he became an editor of the Georg Mueller Verlag and was in charge of publishing the most famous German-speaking authors, such as Mann and Musil. In 1914 to 1916 and 1919 to 1925, he published the literary journal Der neue Merkur, which is the focus of this collection. After his work for the Neue Merkur he wrote for the feature pages of the Frankfuerter Zeitung and from 1930 onward he directed the literary section of the Europäische Revue. In 1933, he emigrated to Tessin in Switzerland where he lived until his death in 1942

The finding aid for this collection is available online

A separate inventory list exists for the correspondence with Robert Musil (44 items)

See also Efraim Frisch Collection (editor of Der Neue Merkur)

Several issues of Der Neue Merkur are available in the LBI library

Photographs removed to Photograph Collection

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